Chapter 9
Damon Hunter found his brother in the wine room, because of course the Hunter family stored its cowardice at a controlled temperature.
Blake stood with both hands braced on the tasting table, his head bowed, a half-empty glass of scotch untouched beside him.
Clearly following Angela hadn’t gone well.
Lily had been escorted into the sitting room by Katherine, who had looked as though she were walking another woman to her own execution and calling it kindness. Richard was on the phone with someone who could make a scandal quieter for the right price.
Damon shut the wine room door.
Blake didn’t turn. "Not now."
"Oh, I think now." Damon leaned against the door, his earlier charm gone. Without it, he looked more like a Hunter than he liked to admit. "You looked at me when she said it."
Blake lifted his head slowly.
The grief in his face might have made another man gentle.
Damon had never found gentleness useful in this family.
"Did you sleep with her?" Blake asked.
Damon slipped his hands into his pockets. "Hello to you too."
"Answer me."
Damon's jaw flexed. "Yes."
The room seemed to tighten around the word.
Blake turned fully.
"When?"
"After Angela's spring preview. Six weeks ago, give or take."
Blake's face drained of color.
Damon continued before Blake could speak. "It was one night."
"Did you know she was after me?"
"No."
"Did you know she worked for my wife?"
"Everyone at that party worked for someone, Blake. She was single as far as I knew, I was single as everyone knows, and I left the next morning because I had a flight to Lisbon."
Blake crossed the room, so fast Damon barely had time to straighten. He shoved Damon back against the door.The impact rattled the bottles in the racks.
Damon grabbed Blake's wrist, eyes flashing. "Careful."
"You slept with the woman who destroyed my marriage."
"No," Damon snapped. "I slept with a single woman after a party. Lily destroyed your marriage. And you gave her a damn map to your bedroom."
Blake's grip tightened.
Damon didn’t look away.
"You don't get to put your wife's pain on me because it's easier than admitting she warned you," Damon said. "I didn't put Lily in your phone. I didn't make her your confidante. I didn't make Angela feel like a jealous fool in her own gallery. You did that."
Blake released him and stepped back as if burned.
Damon straightened his jacket. The silence after violence was always more honest in this family than the dinners before it.
Blake's voice came low. "The baby could be yours."
"Yes."
"Or mine."
Damon's expression shifted. For all his recklessness, for all his lazy charm, the possibility hit him. He looked away for the first time.
"Yes," he said again.
Blake laughed without humor. "That's all you have?"
"What do you want? An apology for having consensual sex with an unmarried woman before I knew she was a grenade?"
"I want my wife not to be destroyed."
"Then stop looking for someone else to blame for the parts that belong to you."
Blake's face twisted, but he didn’t deny it. That, Damon supposed, was progress.
The door opened before either could speak again.
Richard stood there, furious. "What the hell is going on?"
Damon looked at his father. "Family values."
"Not now."
"No, I think now is perfect." Damon walked past Blake. "Lily and I slept together. If she's pregnant, the baby might be mine."
Richard's face went still in the way men like him went still before deciding which truth to bury first.
"Keep your voice down," he said.
Damon laughed. "Fuck off."
Blake looked at their father with something like disgust. "No more quiet."
Richard's gaze sharpened. "You’re both emotional."
Damon pointed at him. "And you’re predictable."
Katherine appeared behind Richard, pale and silent.
Damon's anger faltered when he saw his mother.
She looked at him, then at Blake, and something in her expression broke his chest a little.
Not judgment. Exhaustion. As if she had known Hunter men would eventually make even a new generation of women pay at the same table.
"Damon," she said softly.
"I didn't know, Mom."
"I believe you."
That was the worst part.
Damon swallowed and looked away.
Across the city, Angela was probably standing in a hotel suite with her heart in pieces because every man attached to this family had given Lily Saint something to use.
Damon had given her a night. Blake had given her importance. Their father had given them both a family name where scandal was handled before women were comforted.
Damon dragged a hand through his hair. "If that baby is mine, I'll handle it."
Richard exhaled sharply. "We will handle it."
"No." Damon looked at his father. "I said I'll handle it."
Blake looked at Damon then. Really looked. Not as the reckless brother who had made everything worse. Not as the man he wanted to blame because blame was easier than grief. As a man standing in the wreckage and refusing to let Richard turn the child into another family asset.
"I'm sorry," Blake said.
Damon's expression flickered. "For what?"
"For trying to put my failure on you."
Damon stared at him.
Blake forced himself to keep going. "You slept with a woman who told you she was single. I let that same woman into places in my marriage she never should’ve reached."
For once, Damon didn’t joke.
"No," he said. "She shouldn't have."
Later, in the narrow hallway outside the wine room, Katherine found Damon alone. The charm had drained out of him, leaving a man who looked younger and more frightened than he wanted anyone to see.
"Have you asked if she's seen a doctor?" Katherine asked.
Damon blinked. "No."
"You should."
His jaw tightened. "I'm not ready to be a father."
"No one ever is in the way they imagine."
"I didn't do anything wrong."
"No," Katherine said. "You didn't. But if the child is yours, the child didn't either."
Damon looked down. For the first time, he seemed to truly absorb that the scandal had a heartbeat inside it. Not Lily's weapon. Not Blake's possible ruin. A child.
"I'm a lot of things," Damon said quietly. "But I won't abandon a baby if it's mine."
Katherine touched his cheek, and the pride in her eyes made him want to be better.
A few minutes later, Damon found Blake near the front hall.
"If you want Angela back," Damon said, "stop trying to be the most injured man in a room full of women you helped hurt."
"I know," Blake said.
Damon blinked.
Blake looked down the hallway. "I just don't know how to become useful to her pain instead of another burden."
Damon's expression softened despite himself. "Start by not asking her to manage your feelings."
Blake nodded.
In the front hall, Lily stood near the stairs with her phone pressed to her ear. She saw Damon and ended the call too quickly. Her face flickered. Fear.There it was. Small, but unmistakable.
Damon smiled without warmth. "Hello, Lily."
She lifted her chin. "Damon."
"You look surprised."
"I didn't know you were back."
"I gathered."
Her hand slid toward her stomach again, an instinctive shield or a weapon. Damon couldn’t tell which.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "If that baby is mine, you should have called me."
Her eyes went cold. "You were in Europe."
"There are phones in Europe."
"You made it very clear what that night was."
"Casual sex," Damon said. "Not a legal disappearance."
Lily's mouth tightened.
For a second, the delicate mask was gone. Damon saw calculation, frustration, and something uglier. She had expected Blake to panic. She hadn’t expected Damon to be in the dining room when she threw her match.
"Get a test," Damon said.
Her softness returned. "Stress isn't good for the baby."
He almost laughed. "I'm not Blake. Don't perform for me."
Her eyes flashed.
Good, she knew who she was dealing with. He wasn’t Blake, he knew this game. Damon left her in the foyer, no longer laughing, and walked out into the night with the first real consequence of his life following close behind.